First chemo almost finished

Chiane is a very strong girl, but we all know that chemo is something that breaks you down as time goes by. We expect her to get very ill, but she is a fighter and motivated.

Yesterday was a very busy day! I apologise for not sending an update yesterday.

The challenge of a brain tumour or brain cancer is the fact, that it sits in the brain, and is therefore protected by the fluids inside the brain called the “brain barrier”. Chemotherapy in general terms can reach any type of cancer anywhere in your body fairly easy, except for cancers in the brain. The brain barrier is so effective in protecting the brain, that it also protects the cancer in the brain. The brain barrier stops a lot of Chemo getting through to the cancer in the head, thus the reason why Chiane is on the Milan plan – which is a high dose of chemo to make sure “enough” is getting past the brain barrier.

Chemo has a major impact on the body’s glands and nymphs, which I will explain in another email.

A lot of children are allergic to 1 or 2 of the various chemos in the MILAN treatment plan. Do they test the children to see if you are allergic to any of the chemos? No. Why do you wonder? Because the treatment plan is only effective if they combine ALL the different chemos together – otherwise it is pointless receiving only 4 of the 6, or 5 of the 6…. All of them are needed to make it a “golden treatment plan”. So you wonder what happens to the children that are allergic to some of the chemo’s? Tuff!!! They have to ride the wave out!!!! Let’s hope Chiane is not allergic to any of the drugs!

I’ll go into the glands in another email (to follow)

How is Chiane? She is almost done with her first chemo (started 10 am this morning). She looks good so far. No sickness, but it’s early days. She had a good lunch and we had a lot of fun today!!!

The only defect so far is the last thing we thought about. Her bum hurts when she does a poo because of the chemo in her system. So we got some extra soft tissue paper and a very, very good bum cream that acts as a barrier protecting her skin from the chemo when she goes to the toilet. So she has a little bit of redness on her bum, but that is now sorted!!!! That is it so far! So far so good!